With the advent of information technology, real time locating of objects is growing in prevalence. For example, location determination technology is being used to locate inventory, livestock, vehicle fleets, and individuals in an ad hoc work area, such as an emergency scene and the like. Location determination technology is also being used to streamline supply chains for corporations, seeking to move products to the market faster, and to monitor assets and prevent inventory loss. Also, location determination technology is beginning to be utilized in the sports and gaming industry.
Some sophisticated professional sports around the world such as football and soccer teams make use of location determination technology to determine the location of players in a playing field for the purpose of displaying and/or recording the movements of the players within the field. Such information can be reviewed and/or used, for example, thereafter to analyze player performance of players and formulate strategies for future games.
Location determination systems and methods have been proposed in the past to determine the location of objects. One such system tracks a football using two transmitters inside the football. Such a system is limited to tracking the football and uses a referee transmitter signal at a different frequency to start the location tracking/recording. Another technique determines the location of the object through a combined use of direction of arrival of signals at each of several widely spaced reception points, using closely spaced antennas at each point, with relative phase between the received signals at the widely spaced points.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.